How to Activate iPhone 5 Without iCloud ID & Forgotten Password?

Question

My husband has an iPhone 5 that was bought New by us several years ago. No other owner. It was working fine this morning and this afternoon the screen came up saying it needed to be activated. I've tried using the email address and password we used to set it up originally and it won't open. 

What would cause this and how do you fix it?

Answer 1

This is a new one. It's sound like the iOS crashed or it got somehow erased. Do you have any backups of the device? You can try to connect it to iTunes in DFU Mode to do a full restore and see if you can start over. If you don't have any backups, your data will be gone. 

Another side question, does his Apple ID and password work on other Apple sites, like iTunes or iCloud? If not, he may need to recover his Apple ID and update the password.

Try logging into iCloud.com on the computer to see if your Apple ID works. If not, like Khalil said, you'll want to reset the password at https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid